The Sandman

167

Joona walks as quickly as he can towards the railway line. The heavy bolt-cutters keep hitting compacted banks of snow, jarring his shoulder. The goods train by the warehouse has just started to move, its wheels squealing as it rolls forward. Joona tries to run, but his heart is beating so slowly that his chest feels like it’s burning. He scrambles up the snow-covered railway embankment, slips and hits his knee on the gravel, drops the bolt-cutters but gets to his feet and stumbles onto the railway track. He can no longer feel his hands or feet. The shaking is now uncontrollable and he is experiencing a frightening sense of confusion because he’s so severely frozen.

His thoughts are strange, slow and disintegrating. All he knows is that he has to stop the train.

The heavy train has started to build up speed and is approaching with its wheels screeching. Joona stands in the middle of the track, raises his eyes towards the light and holds up his hand to stop it. The train blows its whistle, and he can just make out the driver’s silhouette inside. The track is shaking with vibrations under his feet. Joona draws his pistol, raises it and shoots out the windscreen of the train.

Fragments of glass fly up over the roof and swirl away. The echo of the shot resounds quickly and harshly between the stacked containers.

Paper is flying round the cab of the train, and the driver’s face is completely expressionless. Joona raises the pistol again and takes aim straight at him. There’s a thunderous sound as the train brakes. The rails scrape and the ground shakes. The train slides forward with its brakes squealing, and stops with a hiss just three metres away from him.

Joona almost falls as he steps off the track. He picks up the bolt-cutters and turns to the train driver.

‘Open the red containers,’ he says.

‘I don’t have the authority to—’

‘Just do it,’ Joona shouts, throwing the bolt-cutters on the ground.

The driver climbs down and picks up the bolt-cutters. Joona goes with him along the train, and points at the first red container. Without a word the driver clambers up onto the rust-brown coupling and sheers the lock. There’s a rumble as the door opens and large boxes containing television sets tumble out.

‘Next one,’ he whispers.

Joona starts walking, drops his pistol, picks it up out of the snow, and carries on towards the rear of the train. They pass eight containers before they reach the next red one bearing the words Hamburg Süd.

The train driver breaks the lock, but can’t open the heavy catch. He hits it with the bolt-cutters, and the sound of metal against metal echoes desolately around the harbour.

Joona staggers forward, shoves the catch up with a scraping sound and the big metal door swings open.

Disa is lying on the rusty floor of the container. Her face is pale and there’s a look of bewilderment in her wide-open eyes. She’s lost one of her boots, and her hair is stiff and frozen round her head.

Disa’s mouth is frozen in a grimace of fear and sobbing.

There’s a deep cut on the right side of her long, slender neck. The pool of blood beneath her throat and neck is already covered by a film of ice.

Gently Joona lifts her down from the container and takes a few steps away from the train.

‘I know you’re alive,’ he says, falling to his knees with her in his arms.

Some blood is trickling over his hand, but her heart has stopped. It’s over, there’s no way back.

‘Not this,’ Joona whispers against her cheek. ‘Not you...’

He rocks her slowly as the snow falls. He doesn’t notice the car stopping, and is unaware of Saga Bauer running towards him. She’s barefoot, wearing just trousers and a T-shirt.

‘We’ve got people on their way,’ she cries as she gets closer. ‘God, what have you done? You need to get some help...’

Saga shouts into her radio, swears, and, as if in a dream, Joona hears her force the train driver to take his jacket off, then she wraps it round his shoulders. She sinks down behind him and holds him while the sirens of police cars and ambulances fill the harbour.

The snow is blown from a large circle of ground as the yellow air-ambulance helicopter lands, settling onto its runners. The sound is deafening and the train driver backs away from the man sitting there with the dead woman in his arms.

The rotors are still turning as the paramedics leap out and run over, their clothes flapping round their bodies.

The draught from the helicopter is blowing rubbish up against the high fence. It feels as if all the oxygen is being blown away from them.

Joona is on the point of losing consciousness when the paramedics force him to let go of Disa’s dead body. His eyes are unfocused, and his hands white with cold. He’s muttering incoherently and resists when they try to get him to lie down.

Saga is crying as she watches him being carried away on the stretcher and into the helicopter. She realises that it’s urgent now.

The noise of the rotors changes as the helicopter rises off the ground, swaying in a side wind that’s picked up.

The angle of the rotors shifts, the helicopter leans forward and disappears across the city.

As they cut his clothes off, Joona starts to sink into a death-like torpor. His eyes are still open, but his pupils have expanded and are so fixed that they no longer react to light. It’s impossible to detect any pulse or sign of breathing.

Joona Linna’s body temperature has sunk below 32 degrees as they descend to land on the helicopter pad on building P8 at the Karolinska Hospital.